One woman in
particular has stood out; her story has been documented by at least four hundred
international, national, and

local newspapers, magazines, and television shows. Her name is
Lisa Beamer, and her husband was on the doomed flight that crashed

in the Pennsylvania
field on September 11th. He had an important role in deciding
to revolt against the terrorists who manned

the plane, and he is credited in
part with saving innumerable lives. The public
first saw
Lisa Beamer on September 20th, when President George W. Bush pointed
to her in the
audience during his address to Congress, and he said that she and her husband
were
examples of exceptional Americans.

Since that speech, Lisa Beamer has
not faded away. The birth of her
daughter, just a month and a half
ago, was announced in over two
hundred newspaper articles in the
US alone. But more interesting than her presence in the media spotlight has
been the message she’s conveyed to the American public, and exactly how eager so many
havebeen to embrace that
message. Beamer is an Evangelical Christian, who lets not a moment pass
without citing scripture and referring to her faith in God. In October,
Lisa Beamer set up a memorial on behalf of her husband, the Todd M. Beamer
foundation, which has a website. On the first page, she has a letter
thanking everyone for supporting her and her family.
She says, “My family and I still wrestle with what has happened, but are comforted with
the knowledge that a sovereign God is in control and that ‘Godis not a God of disorder,
but of peace.’” (I Corinthians 14:33).
And on each page of the website, a biblical quote is introduced.

It is interesting that the
imagery of the biblical citations overwhelmingly emphasizes the greatness and
goodness of God as a father figure and those

who believe in him as his
children. “Do not be terrified; do not
be discouraged, for the Lord, your God, your father, will be with you wherever
you go” (Joshua 1, 9). "He is my loving God and my
fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge”
(Psalm 144, 2). According to a recent Gallup poll, seventy-seven
percent of people, sixty-eight percent of non-religious people said that religion and spirituality were especially

welcome in the wake of the September
11th tragedy. In the same poll, eighty-three percent of respondents
said that Lisa Beamer

was an important symbol of what America is becoming.
Whether these people responded to her religious message or to her pregnancy is
unclear,

but I would argue that they responded to her religious message because
they were sympathetic to her pregnancy. Her pregnancy gave her an in with the
American people; and subsequently, she has become a symbol for much of the
public. The pathos that Lisa Beamer has presented has a great
deal to do with her pregnancy. On a stage full of sympathetic characters, Lisa
Beamer emphasized her pregnancy and she became especially sympathetic.